


and if the stars should fall

by watashi_no_akuma_to_notatakai



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, DW THERE WILL BE A HAPPY ENDING but this might be a long story so, Fluff and Angst, I AM NOT USING TAGS PROPERLY, M/M, Multi, Slow Build?, all other relationships are minor tbh, also shittily written bc i am a dumb, i just, i'll leve now, idk how to use tags okay, im srry, lots of fluff too, mbege is the only larger character besides the murphamy thing, murphy and mbege r bros, spoiler alert: octavia is dead, there will be angst in this fic and alot of it you fuckin know me guys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-03-10 02:50:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3273971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watashi_no_akuma_to_notatakai/pseuds/watashi_no_akuma_to_notatakai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>just a love story about two boys who will actually change each other for the worse, but may not find it in them to care</p><p>(ON HAITUS)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. keep kicking the crap till it's gone

**Author's Note:**

> here it is. The first rocky chapter. Please take in that i suck at beginnings, in fact I have some of the middle completely planned out, and the end sorta in the optional stage but the beginning...I didn't know how to form a proper standing for you all, so bear that in mind I guess. Also it may be a little slow or short or OOC bc we haven't really delved extremely deep into the characters in the show, but I hope the sides I show you, as I imagine them to be, live up to some of your expectations. Also i say also too much which is a great display of how freaking repetitive i am, but alas, this work would have been terrible without the amazing beta of Ewals. ALSO I will nvr frget Murphy's back story, his and Bellamy's pasts sorta play a larger role than necessary in this methinks. 
> 
> On another note (I talk too much) if this fic becomes decent/long enough to need a soundtrack, it will probably be from all the song quotes in the beginning of chaps. I don't chose them for their lyrics, I chose them because I actually love the songs. and tbh the titles from here on out are going to be La Dispute lyrics bc I am trash that's why.

>   
>  _"This is a song about somebody else, so don't worry yourself." -_ Fink 'Looking Too Closely'

 

* * *

  
  
The steps leading up to the main doors are cracked.  
  
The building is stout and grey, the dull silver logo of some kind of wiry bird intertwined in the stone high above his head. Dry, concrete walls match the grey of the late winter sky, and patches of grass surrounding the bleak property are struggling for purchase against crumbling gravel.  
  
It looks absolutely pitiful.  
  
Murphy gives himself ten seconds to absorb it, to let all the anger and anxiety fester. Then he hold it there, holds onto the slight burn in his chest because it's probably the only thing that will get him through today.  
  
He enters the building through the double doors, heavy boots squeaking slightly on the pale linoleum floor. It's almost 11 a.m, so the tiny office is essentially deserted when he enters, save for a lone secretary, and it takes approximately seven minutes of him tapping his foot on the damp carpet for her to pause her chattering phone call.  
  
"Yes?" It's high-pitched, clipped, and she looks at him like she has something better to do.  
  
Murphy clears his throat, leaning onto his elbows on the counter above her desk.  
  
"I just transferred here." He looks her in the eyes, directing a fraction of the resentment stewing in his stomach towards her. She seems unperturbed, probably used to dealing with delinquents of his stature every day.  
  
All high schools were the same.

The same four walls, same water-stained pepper ceilings. The same idiots running about, eating up the same bullshit being petered out by the same out-of-touch assholes. Murphy couldn't stand the thought of living out the next year and a half of his sentence here.  
  
"It's almost the middle of the day, young man. Classes started two hours ago." The glasses framing her face dance on the crook of her nose as she frowns, and Murphy is tempted to reach out and forcefully push them back up so that she'll stop glaring over the lenses at him.  
  
He doesn't.  
  
"I know." Replying, Murphy makes no attempt at an excuse, and offers an almost imperceptible roll of his cerulean blue eyes.  
  
The secretary seems just about done with him and doesn't bother looking up from her computer screen when she speaks.  
  
"Your classes and their respective rooms should be on the schedule you received. If you need an escort, you can sit down and wait for a VP to take you there."  
  
Murphy huffs, dropping back from his rest against the ledge.  
  
"I think I can manage."  
  
He doesn't ask for directions.  
  
Murphy has been inside the building only once before, to meet the principle, discuss his transcripts, and receive a short tour. Still, it takes over ten minutes to find his class.

Mostly because he isn't looking very hard.

The red digits of a clock down the hall read the time. There's half an hour until lunch begins, and for a moment Murphy hesitates, hand poised before the door. He contemplates waiting for the bell, and just attending his two afternoon classes, but finds that he doesn't have the energy to turn back.

Murphy decides he might as well make an appearance now, they'll all be staring at him either way.  
  
The handle turns before Murphy can touch it and the frame swings open away from him. He comes face to face with another student presumably; wild brown hair reaching his shoulders and an expression of absolute stupidity glued on that Murphy realizes is probably the way his face works.  
  
"Yo." The boy grins, a jittery whirlwind of energy at first glance, and brushes past Murphy.  
  
"Thanks Mr.P!" The boy yells over his shoulder as he ambles down the hall, a handful of papers barely contained in one hand and a half-open backpack slung over his shoulder.  
  
A voice echoes back from the classroom,

"Stop running in the halls Mr.Collins!"  
  
Standing in the open doorway, Murphy ultimately regrets his decision.  
  
The teacher, reaching up towards the whiteboard looks to see Murphy and then turns back to writing.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
The man doesn't spare him another glance, and Murphy wonders if everyone employed by this school believes they have something better to do. Not even thirty minutes in the building and he wants out.  
  
Instead of turning on his heel to leave, Murphy walks in, stating for the second time that day,

"I just transferred here."  
  
The teacher stops this time, barely, and gives Murphy about three quarters of his attention.

"Ah yes, John, is it? You can-"  
  
Murphy cuts him off.

"It's Murphy."  
  
"-Hm?"  
  
Murphy responds with only a blank stare, and the man hesitates for an instant.  
  
"Right. Murphy. You can sit at any empty desk."

There are a lot of empty desks, apparently World History wasn't a popular class. The students that are there though, pretend not to watch him as his walks in.

Murphy takes a seat two rows from back, directly to the right of a window overlooking a shoddy parking lot. Soft light spreads directly across the desk, into the room, and Murphy's eyes water a little as his pupils adjust.  
  
The teacher, 'just Mr.P', goes on to explain the lesson, and at some point a booklet on the structure of the UN is placed on his desk. People casually glance back at him when they think he isn't paying attention.  
  
Murphy thinks he is in hell.  
  
The next twenty minutes pass at an achingly slow pace, and when the bell signals the end, Murphy is leaving the building the same way he came.  
  
He doesn't know how, why; but Murphy was good at finding things. Places. Tiny gems that people look over, could walk by every day and not even realize were there.

When he was eleven, after the funeral, his mother had lost her favorite necklace, a gift from his father. Her face was tear-stained for weeks, she threw fits, Murphy had had to walk on eggshells around her.

Until one day he found it, just lying in the corner of the dusty kitchen counter. He'd brought it to her, a smile stretching his face almost painfully, because he was so happy that he would finally be able to stop her from crying.

She did stop crying, in fact she smiled back, and then a few days later when Murphy noticed the chain was nowhere in sight he asked her where it was.

She'd lost it again, she said. She didn't cry this time.

He was too young to realize how strange it was, but years later when she was hung up on liquor and opiates, she relayed to him how she'd pawned it, to buy him a birthday gift.

Murphy hadn't gotten a birthday present that year.

He didn't talk to her much after that.  
  
The park he finds is rundown, slightly out of sight of the street, under the cover of tangled leafless branches. Old oak tress settled around the dewy grass, catching the pale afternoon light, and almost sucking it away.

Everything seemed a shade darker here, the faded red slide, frozen yellow handlebars. It was lonely, but Murphy had never been afraid of loneliness.  
  
Murphy was good at finding things.  
  
The swing set is barely operable and squeaks whenever Murphy adjusts himself. Wind chills the tips of his fingers and Murphy sits, tightening the leather around him and shrugging the collar up to his ears. He fumbles in the attempt to pull a cigarette from the pack in his left pocket but manages to latch one between his teeth. The lighter sputters a few times beneath Murphy's red fingers, but soon there is a spark, a flame, the crackle of tobacco being lit, and peace. Cheeks concave and flush as Murphy inhales, he holds it in his chest, tense, eyelids closed. Murphy's system responds to the smoke, and he feels his lungs fill with warm vapour.

It doesn't burn on the way in, hasn't for a long time.

When he exhales, it's in two wispy pillars through his nose.

Murphy sits alone in a park, chain-smoking his shitty native cigarettes, counting the cracks snaking through the sidewalk.  
  
Third period, he runs into Mbege, the kid he coincidentally shared a name with. The boy is gangly and too cheery for Murphy's taste, but he doesn't seem offended by Murphy's apathy, and spends the next hour and a half instructing Murphy on the staff he'd be wise to avoid, and the girls who will absolutely not hesitate to give him a hand-job _if_ he asked nicely.

Murphy doesn't comment on the last one.

"And then there's Clarke, you wanna stay away from her, man. I mean she's cool but she's dating this guy, Finn. He's cool too, but he's got crazy-eyes." Mbege speaks quietly but he's animated and apparently doesn't know how to stop talking.  
  
Finn, he finds, was the energetic freak from his second class, and as luck would have it, the brunette is also in his first and last classes.  
  
"So where are you from?" Hands fiddle on a pencil with the nub chewed off, and the kids knee bounces erratically.  
  
"Not here." Murphy doesn't look up from the english syllabus to the boy adjacent to him. Finn takes it in stride.  
  
"Well- that's nice. Do they have good ice cream there? Because we've got this place..."  
  
Murphy doesn't know what he hates more. Finn's oblique volume, or his undying persistence.  
  
"-and if you don't like that, the coffee shop on Harwood serves the best cheesecake in the world, I kid you not..."  
  
The day goes by at an achingly sluggish pace, but Murphy finds that the flame of vexation he felt this morning has simmered down into a low ember.  
  
He gets home tired as hell, and heads straight to his bedroom. The unnecessary supply of textbooks Murphy had received that day lay untouched in his bag, slung into the corner when he'd entered.

He runs his fingers along the patchy blanket, limbs splayed atop all his covers, sinking into the pillowy cloud of his comforter. It isn't long before Murphy succumbs to the call of sleep.  
  


 

* * *

 

 

Aside from his own soft breaths, there is no noise in the house.

Until there is.

Murphy's eyelids creep open with the utmost reluctance at the knocking on his bedroom door, breaking the silence that Murphy reveres so much.  
  
She knows the door is locked, it's become a well-formed habit of his, but that doesn't stop her from jiggling the handle a few times in her pursuit to get in.  
  
"John..." She never calls him Murphy, and hasn't once since his father died. Murphy's mother skillfully avoids things, as if that will make them disappear.

"...I made dinner." Her voice holds a tinny quality through the wood of the door, and turning his head into the downy pillow to muffle the sound, Murphy wonders how much she's had to drink.  
  
She never actually makes dinner.

It's just a ploy to get him to spend time with her. Several times, maybe even hundreds of times before, she's come to him saying that dinner was ready. And he'd go with her to the kitchen, where maybe some half-assed toast, or microwave dinner would be sitting on the counter. They'd sit, she'd latch onto his arm and beg him with those sunken, blood-shot eyes to stay with her for a few hours, watch the static old TV, tell her about his day, just be with her. And he had the first few times, thought maybe it would make things better.

But Murphy soon noticed the trend, and whenever Murphy's mother made him dinner, she'd have a friend, maybe more, come over the same night. The living room would be in shambles the next morning, but he'd clean up before she'd recovered enough to leave bed.

And then they would go back to their usual routine of avoiding each other.

His room is shaded black, and there's no moonlight to filter through the thin curtains, but Murphy's eyes adjust to the darkness quickly.

He's too uncomfortable to fall asleep again, too many things flitting through his mind in the soft hush, only noise cutting through is a muted banging from somewhere else in the old property.

Murphy feels like he is drowning, fingers clawing at the edges of his bedspread, and he knows that he can't stay cramped like this for long.  
  
Not much later he slips into the kitchen, past the music blaring in his mother's bedroom, over dusty floorboards; he would have to clean them this weekend. He rummages for something to quiet the grumbling of his stomach and doesn't even discern what he is consuming, only knows he should eat _something_ today.

His mother did the shopping, but only when he deemed her reliable enough to refrain from buying more liquor, only when he wrote the list and divvied up the exact sum of money required.

The floorboards creak softly on his way to the front entrance, but it's unnoticeable under the cacophony spreading through the house.

Murphy chews on a soft caramel from his secret stash as he tugs on his well worn boots and steps out for his nightly walk.  
  
Murphy wanders the neighborhood like he did the first month after they had moved here. His footsteps echo along the dim lit sidewalk, wet from recent rain.

There is a small plot of forest nobody visits, and the streetlights cut out just before he passes the path leading into it. Tall mossy trees blot out most of the moonlight, and a clearing opens up two minutes down the way. His knees stretch up the steep incline of a hill. At the summit where he stops, Murphy can see the complex of townhouses grazing the top of the tree line.

He lowers his jacket, not bothered at the cold pinching his cheeks, and lies on the grass, glaring at the stars. The stars haven't done a single thing to him, but he glares at them anyway.

They hang from the inky blackness, the wan moonlight barely breaking through the clouds. Murphy could see Orion, an outline of four bright specks, forming an unstable trapezoid. Inside those four points, almost tying them together, are three stars tilted in a row; Orions belt. In a soft downward arc from that is another grouping of dimmer stars; his sword.

Murphy intently traces the constellations with his eyes, as if he didn't have them memorized already. The damp grass chills the back of his skull, but Murphy lays there for no less than hour, seemingly challenging the universe to a staring contest.

He doesn't think about much, then. Only about how stupid it was to admire gleaming silver pinholes in the sky. Most of them were long dead, and what good did commending the dead ever do?

Thoughts like these didn't stop his gaze from fixating on the kaleidoscope at every opportunity, didn't stop him from wearing his fathers jacket all the time, didn't stop him from being angry.  
  
The overcast moon follows him on his way home. 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
Murphy wakes to what can only be described as a cross between a truck's reverse signal and a WWII air-raid siren.

It blared, unceasing, crippling Murphy's thoughts and resulting in only incoherent groaning.

A fist into the general region of snooze button and the calamity cuts off.

He doesn't have a phone, if he did, he sure as hell wouldn't be using the ancient banshee scream of the antichrist to wake him up.

He used to have one, but it broke beyond repair from all the times he's thrown it to the floor. Usually after his mother wouldn't stop calling him to come home, after nights away with zero contact between them. But things would be different now. With this new move, he'd resolved to make an effort not to stay out all night.

Murphy was still waiting for it to become routine. 

He's still in his clothes from the night before, as per usual. They're slightly damp and crumpled, and the offensive teen avoids smelling himself as he cracks his back stumbling from the alluring confines of his bed.

Murphy strips down to his boxers leaving the leather jacket atop his covers, throwing the rest of his belongings in a pile.

Moving heedlessly through the house, Murphy decides to skip his morning class, have a bath, and make it in time for second period. He wanders to kitchen, stretching arms above his head and stifling a yawn. His legs drag across the off-white polyester carpet, down stairs, then transition into squeaking across wood.

On his turn into the kitchen Murphy stops, and blinks, rubbing his knuckles into his eyes just to make sure he's not still asleep.

There is a man wearing nothing but a thin towel, back to him, puttering around his kitchen.

"What. The fuck."

The man stills, arms half emerged in a cupboard, one fist gripping a can.

"Who are you?" The 40 something asks Murphy, as if he has every right to be there, in Murphy's goddamn house. In Murphy's goddamn kitchen.

Murphy's eyes narrow, his mouth contorts, rigid with fury.

"Who the fuck are you?" Murphy spits out the words like they are battery acid.

His hands clasp into clenched fists, his neck flushed and mottled crimson.

"No- Actually, don't answer that, just get the fuck out."

The man doesn't give Murphy his attention, still eager on mapping out the contents of the kitchen drawers.

"Huh. You must be the kid..."

A storm brews inside Murphy, and he can feel the animosity boiling, right on the edge of overflowing and tearing down everything in its path.

Murphy reaches out, deftly picking up a ceramic candle holder from the coffee table next to him. He tests it weight in his hand; it's heavy.

His voice is much softer now, eerily calm.

"I'm giving you ten seconds to get out of my house."

"It isn't your house." Murphy starts at the voice behind him and almost drops the ornament.

He turns to see his mother, anger faltering but not halting in it's advance.

"Be nice," she directs a tight smile at Murphy, the skin of her mouth stretching like some cruel clown mask. Her hair is stringy, she hasn't let him wash it in a while, and Murphy can see the skin of her hands are cracked as she holds them to her hips.

Yet _her_ eyes are the ones that burn with barely concealed disgust.

He looks back and forth between them, palm stinging at the tightness of his grip.

"Don't you have school?"

Every word stung, only fueling the fire raging inside of him. Every persecuting phrase was lighter fluid, rooting Murphy's jaw together like steel wire.

Never in his life has he wanted to hit his mother more.

He's never laid a finger on her, wouldn't dream of it. They waged war with their voices, fought with cutting remarks, and she would sometimes chuck whatever was nearest to her hands in order to damage him.

But he wouldn't dare hit her, because Murphy didn't think he hated her enough.

Right now, he's not so sure.

Murphy barely makes it to his room before the ceramic is released from his grasp and into the adjacent wall.

The door crashes closed behind him and he locks it, hands trembling with barely suppressed anger. The hurricane inside him needs to be let out, and leaving it to simmer inside of him would cause more devastation than it was worth.

Murphy could feel the hard, painful lump in the back of his throat and a burning sensation at the corner of his eyes. His breaths increased rapidly as he paced his room, and a small but intense pain struck the top of a nerve in his head.

Before he knew it there was shouting, there were things being strewn about, slamming into walls, crashing on the floor; he knew it was him doing these things, yet the noise seemed so distant.

The reprieve of tears didn't come, but the satisfaction of making things break _did_.

Time moves in fast forward, until Murphy was sweating, slumped on the floor against his bed, and all he can see was his own bloody fist, view obstructed by the line of his matted fringe.

He recognizes his own voice repeating, "There are rules." As he tried to placate his desperate breathing.

He repeats himself, because it's true.

There are rules. 

People were usually gone by the morning, and if not, they sure as hell didn't linger around the house, invading Murphy's personal space.

They weren't allowed in his room, or anywhere near it for that fact, whether Murphy was present or not.

They weren't allowed in the garage, where Murphy kept his plants. Nor were they allowed to put their grimy hands on Murphy's food.

They were absolutely forbidden from wandering around with no clothes on.

There are rules.  
  
Murphy's breathing settles enough to highlight the muffled voices beyond his door. It infuriates him that the man is still there, in _his_ house.

Murphy knows needs something to help him get a grip and rises from his spot on the floor. He enters the adjoining bathroom and starts the tap on his large bath.

When they moved, Murphy had been adamant about taking the room with a connected bathroom, and his mother had been too displaced to fight him about it.

He sits on the edge of the tub, waiting for it to fill. Running his hands through his damp, russet hair, and craning his next to check the clock in his room, Murphy heaves a strained sigh. He decides he doesn't have enough time to draw this out; he can't start missing too much school this early on in the semester.

His mother often said, 'When it rains, it pours.' and Murphy can't help but release a short, self-depreciating laugh at the thought.

Murphy turns on the radio, whatever song playing going in one ear and out the other, but effectively blocking out any outside voices with the possibility of disrupting his tranquility. The bath is about three quarters full when he figures that's enough.  
  
Murphy feels almost withdrawn, and decides he needs at least a minor picker-upper in order to get himself through the rest of the school day.

He digs through the reserved drawer and finds them. 

There's only a few left at the moment, and Murphy selects one that he thinks will wake him up. It smells of citrus, and shimmers slightly in the fluorescent light.

He drops it into the steaming water.

The bath bomb fizzles, froths, releasing aromatic wisps of sweet lemon and orange into the air.

The water slowly colors itself green, with bubbles of yellowish gold.

Murphy slips in and the heat engulfs him, streams of steam curling up from the edges, water lapping at his chin.

Murphy wishes the tub would expand so that he could dip below the surface and go swimming, like I used to on hot summer days in the woods with his dad.

Those sentiments usually come draped in nostalgia, and Murphy holds his breath above the surface, counting how long it takes for the thoughts to replace themselves with black spotting at the edges of his vision.  
The sweltering water and sweet air trapped in the room make him dizzy, but Murphy breathes quietly, wrapped in his own white noise.  
  
Later, when he dries himself off, he internally thanks god that the soap he had chosen didn't contain glitter. It was his guilty pleasure; baths. So when he discovered the abundant world of bath bombs at the age of 12, he had stolen $40 from his mothers savings and bought 6 of them. Since then, he always set money aside for his fixation.

No one knew about it, not even his mother; then again, she didn't know a lot of things about him.

Murphy didn't feel inclined to share.  
  
He leaves through the window, not wanting to chance another run in with the occupants in his home.

He's late to class. The secretary is unsympathetic.

Empty hallways. Crowded classroom. Ringing in his ears. Smoke wisps in cooling air. Cracked steps. Cluttered locker. Bright posters. Obscure static announcements. Homework stuffed into bag. Disconnected chatter.

Only Mbege cuts through the haze, because he sometimes has interesting things to say. They interact with an added bonus; Mbege doesn't force Murphy to reply.

It's only after school that Murphy really centres himself, when Mbege halts his exit from the school and spontaneously invites him over.

"What?"

Murphy hadn't really been paying attention, too distracted with zipping up his overflowing schoolbag.

"You wanna come chill? At my place." The lanky boy repeats.

Murphy is slightly confused, he's only known the kid for a day. In fact he doesn't really know him, yet the boy is grinning at him like they've been friends since utero.

Murphy wants to say no, he really does. Because there's no way playing nice with this guy is going to help him. Mbege didn't look like a pushover, and Murphy wasn't one to place his faith in loyalty.

Murphy thinks he should go home, the house was probably empty by now, and he could hang out in the garage, or maybe read comics on the veranda.

He'd probably enjoy himself more on his own. 

But somehow, under the scope of that expectant gaze, Murphy finds himself saying,

"Sure."


	2. For Real, For Real?

> Stand down, drop these weapons now. Walking in this high. Walking in this high. - Elias 'Cloud'
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

 

Murphy starts walking home with Mbege most days after school. It becomes routine, like the way Murphy always stamps out his cigarette on the sidewalk when it burns to the cherry. He found it uncomfortable at first, sitting in the boys basement, politely refusing whatever Mbege openly offered. But the quiet of the room, the stack of games that highlighted the zombie apocalypse was enough to have them spread out on the couch, welcome with the warmth of companionship filling the air as they cursed loudly and hammered at the controllers.   
Mbege had a huge pantry, and after a few days of Murphy refusing his hospitality, Mbege practically lay out a feast on the floor and exclaimed 'If you dont help me eat all this im kicking you out right fucking now'. After that, Murphy stopped saying no. There was no need to, this stupid kid made him want to say yes.   
The dynamic duo came around sometimes, but mostly it was Murphy and Mbege. Not that he didn't admittedly enjoy their company. Monty had a knack for stomping out the awkward silences that Jaspers shitty jokes usually brought about, and they accepted Murphys prescence as easily as Mbege did.   
On one particular afternoon, Jasper leans his lips close to Murphy's ear, and he jolts, forcing himself to stop from pulling away.  
"Kamakazi!" He yells, and Murphy does pull away now, wondering in panic if his hearing is all but done for. Jasper grins, nose scrunching in a way reminiscent of a chipmunk.  
"What the fuck was that for?" He snaps, shifting his entire body away from the offensive boy. Mbege only chuckles from his perch on the foot of the couch and Monty doesnt draw his eyes away from the western playing on the large flat screen.   
"The Furher!" Jasper bellows, right arm raised in- you guessed it- nazi salute. Murphy looks to the other boys for a moment, seriously questioning their complacent attitudes.  
He opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, eventually sighing and accepting the apparently normal occurence.   
Monty loudly chews on a cherry twizzler and Mbege hushes him, pressing "This is my favourite part!"   
They had decided on The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly after Mbege was astonished to find the other boys had never seen the classic film.  
Murhphy, still reeling, speaks over the hush, "You've seen it already and still wont explain," He gestures towards jasper, "this!"  
Mbege chuckles. Caramel skin changing color in the luminesce of the TV screen. "Whats there to explain? He eats my food, I pretend hes not here, easy peasy."  
Murphy surprises himself by laughing. Uncontrollably. One after the other they all join in. Wiping the tears from the corner of his eyes Murphy realizes that this is the first time he's felt this good, in a long time.

The next few months pass almost as fast as his first day. Which is to say, slightly less painfully, and slightly less slowly. He builds a routine, changes his courses, now only seeing Finn twice a day, and 'mr.P', never. God Bless, Murphy thinks, an athiest himself.

When February arrives, it's with even more frost than January. More than a handful of sidewalks snake around the town sluiced in black ice. The clouds stay a perpetual shade of gray, whether morning or night, and the chill wreaks havoc on any green buds hoping to pop up for an early spring. Murphy trudges through the thick sheet of snow littering the ground, contemplating how long it'll be before he needs to go through the hassle of buying a new pair of boots. These ones had lasted since before his last school, and he quite liked them, in fact, he'd be distraught to see them go. Maybe he'd plant some flowers in them come April, he thinks.

The streetlights look taller with their hats of snow, and the breeze cuts through the wool liner of Murphy's leather jacket. As much as he hates the cold, the feeling of clarity he gets from being outside, the headrush of his cigarette so much more noticable, he feels as though the worn space between winter and spring was his favourite season. When Murphy finally returns to class a couple minutes late, again, Mbege shoots him the concerned yet chastising look he seems to have perfected.   
When Murphy finally arrives at his seat, after a brief detour to the front desk with his late slip, Mbege nudges his shin with a heavily clad foot.   
"What took you so long?" Mbege whispers as probably the only decent teacher in this school starts a lecture on domestic court.  
Murphy waits until the teacher has the back of her bleach blonde hair facing him. "Just lost track of time." Murphy states.  
"Hey you should come hang with the gang at lunch today. We secure a spot in the caf at one of the best tables every year, except for 2012 man you shoulda been around for that..." Mbege continues and Murphy tunes him out only slightly. When he hears a pause in the speech Murphy turns to see Mbege, expectant, and regrets not listening for a moment, but nods and gives a nuetral "Mhmm" in the hopes that it'll pass.   
It does, to his relief, but his relief sinks at the sight of Mbege's mischevious grin.  
"Awesome then, see you in the caf tomorrow!"   
The bell rings before Murphy can respond and he curses under his breath as Mbege makes a hasty escape. He chuckles to himself all the way home.

  
The next day Murphy makes his first endeavor into the hell that was the school cafeteria. He is following Mbege down the linoleum hallway that leads to the double dorrs when he starts regretting his desision. There are so many things that could go wrong, have gone wrong in the past, so Murphy slows his pace until Mbege has to stop to look at him.

"Hey I think I'm just gonna go out for a smoke-" Murphy starts.

"Nope!" He gently grabs Murphy by the arm, "Everything will be fine. Stick with me and it'll be smooth sails from here on out." Mbege smiles his den-mother smile and Murphy doesn't have the energy to fight him. They enter through the swinging doors and head to a table next to the floor to ceiling windows lining one wall.

Wild brunette hair whips around as they approach and Murphy isn't too steps from the table when Finn throws an arm over his shoulder, grinning.

"Well look what the cat dragged in!" Finn half-yells. Murphy wonders if Finn even has an 'inside voice.'

"Yo guys, this is my buddy M to the urphy." Mbege motions back and forth between Murphy and the group. Jasper and Monty nod in acknowledgment, but the rest of the group is a mixed bag. A girl Finn shrugged off as 'that's just Raven' doesn't lift her head from her sketchbook to even take note of his presence. Clarke was a bit too radiant for Murphy, she introduced herself as head of the school counsel and never stopped smiling. It made him uncomfortable. There were a few others on the ends of the table who seemed pretty cool to Murphy, like Harper. Finn finally let go of Murphy's shoulder to wrap his arm around Clarke's waist.

"Hey." Murphy nods to the table in general.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey this is obviously not a full chapter but i needed to get something out to you guys before i got stabbed (by myself) or some shit


End file.
